Reclaiming his place

Her face, previously relaxed and cheerful, had now transformed into a serious and frightening expression

, her eyes clearly emitted killing intent, and the silver-coloured long-sword that was extracted from her bag, soon assumed a battle position.

She took the first shot, and attacked him with everything she had, swinging her sword from right to left, obviously aiming for his neck, he easily parried it with his dagger, not

moving an inch.

While their blades were still touching he provoked her, saying:"is that all you have? Well now I see why you are hiding from Odin, what a pity, you inherited the bloodline of the most powerful woman in Norse mythology, and yet, here you are, stuck in a cave, like a mole, struggling to fight a nobody like me."his tone made it sound like he was bored, and since he wasn't panting at all, it seemed as though this was all child's play for him.

And it actually was, not only were the words he said, only to test her, if he actually wanted to hurt her, or kill her he could've done so in the blink of an eye, he was just not interested in it, for the next 15 minutes, she fiercely attacked him with all she had, before falling to the ground exhausted and passed out.

He just took her back inside and repositioned her on the bed.

Waiting for her to wake up, he started cooking.

He didn't really have much materials to work with as the only ones buyable in the village were:

Fish, potatoes, milk, eggs, flour and some spices.

He had already used some for the pancakes and what was left was for both evening and dinner.

He positioned the already cleaned fish on the pan, with various spices and with potatoes and then covered it with another pan, with a little shovel, he put some of the charcoal burning underneath the two pans on top of them, trying to resemble a cooking stove.

After finishing cooking, and now itching to improve, he went back inside, and seeing Elsa still sleeping, he shook her shoulder, " hey wake up".

Just as it happened the first time, she glanced at him really intensely and didn't speak.

He spoke first,"your turn"

"For what?!"she replied

" you turn to teach me, you sparred with me for almost twenty minutes, we'll stop here since you fainted."

"Are you for real?"

"Yes I am"

"Haaa…."

"Then at least tell me how you know who I am and who I'm hiding from"

"That's a secret"he said, smiling a little bit and covering his mouth with a single finger, as if to signal someone to be quiet.

She was definitely not happy with the answer but didn't have the power necessary to ask the same question again and expect a different answer.

So she just replied:"fine, come here, sit like I'm doing"

….

"Sure enough, I was right"

Bruno was sitting in a leg crossed position and in his hands, were positioned two mana stones.

The only reason he requested Elsa to teach him meditation, wasn't to raise his mind rank, as he could already raise it proceeding with the awakening, but because he wanted to try meditating while absorbing the mana stones.

And it worked perfectly, normally, the way he absorbed the stone was casual, and much of the mana in the stone always got lost during the process, but now, the mana continued to flow inside him not ever leaving his body.

It was a groundbreaking discovery, as it would have allowed him to far surpass others in his rank, with a significantly higher mana stat.

He meditated all evening and night, only stopping for dinner.

After a day like that, the bed felt amazing, and the pillow even better.

That's right. He was finally able to conquer his position on the bed. He didn't know if it was because Elsa trusted him more now that he knew her identity, or if she just had a bit of pity. But he didn't really care.

The next morning, when he woke up the sun was barely up, that meant it was around 4 a.m.

He walked out of bed, where Elsa was now sleeping soundly, trying not to wake her up.

Just as he did yesterday, he bought the materials from town, then returned home and made pancakes, before heading for the gate another time, this morning, his awakening rank had been raised by three, and this motivated him to clear the gate, on top of that, he didn't really know when the gate formed, so, he had to clear it before an outbreak of monsters would attract many awakened, possibly revealing their hiding spot.

He passed the waterfall, and was directed to the deepest part of the cave where the two gates resided.

When he was quite close to the gate, a strange sensation took over his body, it was like if the mana in the air was tens of times thicker than in the gate, even breathing was difficult, but he passed right through it thinking it was one of the first sign of a mana break.

Oh god was he wrong….